innovations.  Towards the end of the seventh century some of the families attached to the temple of Am on at Napata had endeavoured to bring about a kind of religious reform; among other innovations they adopted the practice of substituting for the ordinary sacrifice, new rites, the chief feature of which was the offering of the flesh of the victim raw, instead of roasted with fire.  This custom, which was doubtless borrowed from the negroes of the Upper Nile, was looked upon as a shameful heresy by the orthodox.  The king repaired in state to the temple of Anion, seized the priests who professed these seditious beliefs, and burnt them alive.

[Illustration:  148.jpg Encampment de Bacharis]

The use of raw meat, nevertheless, was not discontinued, and it gained such ground in the course of ages that even Christianity was unable to suppress it; up to the present time, the brinde, or piece of beef cut from the living animal and eaten raw, is considered a delicacy by the Abyssinians.

The isolation of the Ethiopians had rather increased than lowered their reputation among other nations.  Their transitory appearance on the battle-fields of Asia had left a deep impression on the memories of their opponents.  The tenacity they had displayed during their conflict with Assyria had effaced the remembrance of their defeat.  Popular fancy delighted to extol the wisdom of Sabaco,* and exalted Taharqa to the first rank among the conquerors of the old world; now that Kush once more came within the range of vision, it was invested with a share of all these virtues, and the inquiries Cambyses made concerning it were calculated to make him believe that he was about to enter on a struggle with a nation of demigods rather than of men.  He was informed that they were taller, more beautiful, and more vigorous than all other mortals, that their age was prolonged to one hundred and twenty years and more, and that they possessed a marvellous fountain whose waters imparted perpetual youth to then-bodies.  There existed near their capital a meadow, perpetually furnishing an inexhaustible supply of food and drink; whoever would might partake of this “Table of the Sun,” and eat to his fill.**

* The eulogy bestowed on him by Herodotus shows the esteem in which he was held even in the Saite period; later on he seems to have become two persons, and so to have given birth to the good Ethiopian king Aktisanes.

** Pausanias treats it as a traveller’s tale.  Heeren thought that he saw in Herodotus’ account a reference to intercourse by signs, so frequent in Africa.  The “Table of the Sun” would thus have been a kind of market, whither the natives would come for their provisions, using exchange to procure them.  I am inclined rather to believe the story to be a recollection, partly of the actual custom of placing meats, which the first comer might take, on the tombs in the necropolis, partly of the mythical “Meadow of Offerings”